From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jeffrey A Law To: gcc@gcc.gnu.org Cc: gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Copyright years Date: Mon, 01 Jan 2001 16:44:00 -0000 Message-id: <23652.978389539@upchuck> X-SW-Source: 2001-01/msg00018.html ------- Forwarded Message - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- For those who haven't heard, the year is now 2001. That means that whenever you change a file with a copyright notice at the top, you should add 2001 to the list of copyrighted years. For those who work on GNU programs, I have appended the relevant extract from the GNU maintainer notes. When you update the copyright notice, make sure it looks reasonable. Specifically, if 2000 is not listed, but the file was changed in 2000 (you can use `cvs log' to check this), go ahead and add 2000. We often forget to update the copyright notice when a change is made. Ian Copyright Notices ================= You should maintain copyright notices in all files of the program. A copyright notice looks like this: Copyright 19XX, 19YY, 19ZZ COPYRIGHT-HOLDER The COPYRIGHT-HOLDER is usually the Free Software Foundation, Inc., but may be someone else. The list of year numbers should include each year in which you finished preparing a version which was actually released, and which was an ancestor of the current version. It is important to understand that rule carefully, much as you would understand a complicated C statement in order to hand-simulate it. This list is *not* a list of years in which versions were released. It is a list of years in which versions, later released, were *completed*. So if you finish a version on Dec 31, 1994 and release it on Jan 1, 1995, this version requires the inclusion of 1994, but doesn't require the inclusion of 1995. The versions that matter, for purposes of this list, are versions that were ancestors of the current version. So if you made a temporary branch in maintenance, and worked on branches A and B in parallel, then each branch would have its own list of years, which is based on the versions released in that branch. A version in branch A need not be reflected in the list of years for branch B, and vice versa. However, if you copy code from branch A into branch B, the years for branch A (or at least, for the parts that you copied into branch B) do need to appear in the list in branch B, because now they are ancestors of branch B. ------- End of Forwarded Message